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What is the relationship?
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Bren
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 6:53 pm    Post subject: What is the relationship? Reply with quote

Garhkal's question about clones and their progenitors reminded me of something from our house campaign.

In our house campaign, my GM had a Dark Jedi, named Shadow, who cloned himself. My Jedi PC freed/rescued the clone. I'm not sure if the clone had the strength of the original. He definitely did not have the training and experience of the original and so was quite a bit weaker than his progenitor and was eventually killed by Shadow while protecting his pregnant lover from Shadow. She eventually gave birth to a force sensitive child. Where it gets a bit wierd is that Shadow is my PCs father.

So what is my PCs relationship with the son of the clone of Shadow?
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jmanski
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 7:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

So how is Shadow's son related to Shadow's clone's son.... I guess that makes you brothers-in-clone? I dunno.
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Bren
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 7:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

jmanski wrote:
So how is Shadow's son related to Shadow's clone's son.... I guess that makes you brothers-in-clone? I dunno.
Nicely summarized though. Smile It reminds me of Miles Vorkosigan; which is not really coincidental since the GM and I both like Lois McMaster Bujold's Barayarran stories. Laughing

It actually freaks out my character. And as he grew up thinking he was an only child and an orphan without any biological family, he really wants a family. He knows he and Shadow's clone's son are related, but he just can't quite wrap his brain around what the relationship is exactly. For now he thinks of them as some kind of cousins.
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Ankhanu
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 7:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You genetically share 1/4 to 1/2 of the same genes, you're half-brothers... genetically. You're cousins in more standard familial standing... it's the same as being the children of two couples where one parent in each couple is an identical twin.

Say Bill and Joe are identical twins. Bill has a son with Charlotte, named Frank. Joe has a son with Hilary, named James.
Genetically, Frank and James have the same father, but different mothers; they're genetic half-brothers. But because Bill and Joe are not the same person, they'd generally be seen as cousins (though they are genetically closer than cousins are).

The situation is the same whether the cloning process happens post- or pre- natal. The only difference is timing.
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Bren
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 7:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Half-brother cousins. Smile I like that.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 8:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A soundtrack for this discussion
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Bren
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 11:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

crmcneill wrote:
A soundtrack for this discussion
At work, so I haven't listened. But my Jedi PC is a from a farming world. Fortunately knowing Absorb/Dissipate Energy he is no longer a literal redneck. Wink
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Whill
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 12:56 pm    Post subject: I love genetics! Reply with quote

While it is true that clones are genetically equivalent to their genetic host in the same way that identical twins are genetically equivalent to each other, clones are not related to their genetic host in the same way that identical brothers are related to each other. Identical twins are not identical with their genetic progenitors (parents), only with each other.

We are all genetic offspring of others. Bren's PC is the natural sexual offspring of two genetic progentitors, one of whom is Shadow. Shadow's clone is also the genetic offspring of Shadow, like Boba Fett was the genetic offspring of Jango Fett. Only half of the PC's genetic coding comes from Shadow, while all of the clone's genetic coding comes from Shadow. Since half of the PC's genetic coding comes from the same progenitor as the clone, that technically makes Bren's PC a half-brother of the clone.

And that means Bren's PC is a half-uncle to the clone's child, from a relationship point of view, which was Bren's actual question.
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Bren
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 1:27 pm    Post subject: Re: I love genetics! Reply with quote

Whill wrote:
Since half of the PC's genetic coding comes from the same progenitor as the clone, that technically makes Bren's PC a half-brother of the clone.

And that means Bren's PC is a half-uncle to the clone's child, from a relationship point of view, which was Bren's actual question.

Hmmm...we can simplify the discussion a little by calling the PC Bren (which is where my screen name comes from).

So now Bren is a half-uncle-brother cousin to the baby. This is sounding more and more rednecked. Laughing

Gee, no wonder my only averagely bright character is confused about the relationship. Wink Half-uncle works well though, given the respective ages are 19 yrs for Bren and about 3 months for the baby.

And the character does want to fit this into some sort of more-or-less normal relationship description. His family life is a bit irregular, what with the deceased alien "aunt and uncle" that raised him, the former Dark Jedi scholar of Sith Technology and now deceased dad, the force ghost mom, and the 8' tall Coynite brother - some kind of regular name for the relationship to the kid would be fantastic.

Most of what Bren internally believes about family life is naive and overly perfect and comes from watching the Star Wars holoshow equivalents of Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, Eight is Enough, the Cosby Show, or Seventh Heaven. Everything is fixable and it only takes 24-48 minutes to fix it. Laughing *

I think uncle sounds just right about right, somewhat paternal, yet somewhat distant. Smile

Given cloning seems uncommon (well except for the Clone Army) and not well accepted in Star Wars - I assume it's not very easy for most of the characters in universe to parse the relationships. Hence the rationale for some of the confusion.

* Bren's players view is a little more sophisticated. But sometimes only a little. Wink
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Whill
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 2:06 pm    Post subject: Re: I love genetics! Reply with quote

Bren wrote:
His family life is a bit irregular, what with the deceased alien "aunt and uncle" that raised him, the former Dark Jedi scholar of Sith Technology and now deceased dad, the force ghost mom, and the 8' tall Coynite brother - some kind of regular name for the relationship to the kid would be fantastic.

A "bit" irregular? Uncle Bren's family is jacked-up! Smile

Being considered an "uncle" to the kid may refer back to Bren's alien adoptive "uncle", so that might eventually make the most sense to Bren.
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Ankhanu
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 2:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Unless I'm reading wrong, Whill is complicating the relationship. I read it as this:


Am I wrong?
Temporally, the clone would be younger than Shadow, but that makes it no less genetically him. In the genetic sense of things there's no uncle position present at all.
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 7:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

IMO, that seems to be bring in way more complication to this. You present two points of view, but neither is not the way I look at cloning from a relationship standpoint.

On the left that is the scenerio for any brothers. They are two seperate people with the same parents who marry different spouses and each have children who are cousins to each other. I don't consider clones to be brothers with their genetic progenitors.

On the right, you do show the genetic equivalency of clone and his genetic donor each having kids by a different wife which is also the genetic equivalency of identical twins having kids. Genetic equivalent relationships are the not the actual relationships.

Are the respective sons of identical twins actually considered to be half-brothers relationship-wise (even though they are the genetic equivalent of half-brothers)? I know some identical twins with kids who would take great offense to you calling their respective sons half-brothers with each other. Even though the twins are genetically identical, they are two seperate men with the same parents = brothers. Being the genetic equivalent of someone does not mean you are that person. The twins' sons are cousins because they have different fathers, which means your left chart applies more than your right one to them, relationship-wise.

So regardless of clone being genetically identical to his genetic donor in the same way that identical twins are genetically identical to each other, I don't view a clone to be a bother of the genetic donor. Identical twins actually start as one being that divides evenly into two identical beings. But that one being has the same two genetic progentitors (mom and dad) which makes them full brothers. The relationship between a genetic donor and his clone is not the same. Cloning does not divide one being into half to make two identical beings. It takes one person's genes and replicates them to create a new being. This does not describe brotherhood to me.

Relationship-wise, cloning is a lot more like procreating offspring. But instead of natural process with two parents, there is only one "parent", the original supplier of genes. I view a clone of a man to be his son, relationship-wise. Cloning creates someone as genetically equivalent as two twins are to each other, but you are not actually creating your own twin brother.

And this doesn't seem complicated to me at all:

...Shadow
... |......|
Bren . clone
.......... |
......... kid

Bren, this is an interesting thread. My idea and Ank's two ideas are all three true... from a certain point of view.
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Hellcat
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 10:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jango Fett wanted one unaltered clone for himself. This clone became his son, Boba Fett. Technically, the entire clone army were descended from Jango Fett, so technically Boba Fett had thousands upon thousands of brothers. Any clone who had a kid then could claim their kid had thousands of uncles. So I'd say in your PC's case the son of the clone would either be your nephew or your half nephew.

Shadow is to be considered both the father of you and the clone. Now if your PC is a clone of Shadow in effect you and the other clone are full blood brothers descended from Shadow. This makes the clone's son your full blood nephew. However, if your PC had a mother then as the clone is only going to have just Shadow's DNA they only share half your DNA. So their your half brother. That makes their son related to you by blood, but their your half nephew.
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Bren
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 8:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hellcat wrote:
Now if your PC is a clone of Shadow in effect you and the other clone are full blood brothers descended from Shadow...
Since people seem to be enjoying the discussion on relationship I will add a little more background.

Bren (the PC) had a mother, whose last name he uses. Father and Mother are both Jedi/force users. His father left before Bren was born. This is toward the end of the Jedi purges. Pregnant mother goes into hiding. Father and mother have a Life Bond. Father, while gone, begins gaining DSPs and eventually turns to the Dark Side becoming Shadow. This process causes nightmares, fear, rage, and DSP accumulation through the life bond for infant Bren's mother. Eventually she dies in a speeder crash. Which could be accident, murder, or suicide. He is raised on a backwater farming planet by his mother's faithful alien retainers/protectors.

Whill wrote:
Bren, this is an interesting thread. My idea and Ank's two ideas are all three true... from a certain point of view.
8) I am finding this relationship discussion interesting as well and I actually prefer that the relationship is difficult to unambigously describe and explain. I can easily imagine Bren trying to explain this to others (and totally failing and getting them even more confused than he is). Laughing

I am leaning towards the uncle-nephew relationship because it dramatically parallels Bren's upbringing and because Bren tends to think about things intuitively and functionally much more than literally or intellectually. (Note that this is not due to any defect in Ankhanu's reasoning and while growing up the character always wanted a brother. Laughing )

But the mother, Jevara is a physician. I like the fact that she may have a different point of view that make sense and that she perhaps favors the genetic half-brother explanation. I think I will forward this to my GM suggesting the mom takes the other POV. Very Happy

Fortunately for the baby, baby and mom have a protector besides my PC since Bren lives a very peripatetic lifestyle and is a major trouble magnet
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